Percentage Volume Oscillator (PVO)

Meant to show whether volume is rising or falling against its own average.

What it measures

PVO applies the Percentage Price Oscillator to volume: a fast EMA of volume against a slow one, as a percentage. With signalEMAPeriods, it adds a signal line and histogram.

How traders read it

Traders use rising PVO to confirm a breakout and falling PVO to warn that a move is running out of participation.

Formula

PVO = (EMA(volume, fast) − EMA(volume, slow)) / EMA(volume, slow) × 100
signal = EMA(PVO, signalEMAPeriods)
histogram = PVO − signal

Settings and output

Call: pvo(fastEMAPeriods, slowEMAPeriods, signalEMAPeriods)

Setting	Chart default
`fastEMAPeriods`: Fast EMA Periods	12
`slowEMAPeriods`: Slow EMA Periods	26
`signalEMAPeriods`: Signal EMA Periods	9

What you get: a list of 3, in this order: 1. a number (“Price Volume Oscillator”); 2. a number (“Price Volume Oscillator Signal”); 3. a number (“Price Volume Oscillator Histogram”).

Warm-up: with pvo(12, 26, 9), it asks for 0 bars of history and a run-up of 61, and its first value came on bar 34 of the example data.

Chart

Percentage Volume Oscillator (PVO) drawn by its own code on example prices

The prices are made up, hourly, and the same on every page, so the chart shows how the indicator behaves, not how a market behaved.

In an algorithm

function onIntervalClose() {
  const lines = pvo(12, 26, 9);
  log("PVO", lines[0], "signal", lines[1], "histogram", lines[2]);
}

With a signal, the order is PVO, signal, histogram: the reverse of the PPO’s order. Without signalEMAPeriods, pvo(12, 26) gives a single number.